3 App Options for Converting Facebook Fans Into Customers

Your customers live on Facebook but earning their Likes isn't enough to earn their business. To turn your Facebook fans into paying customers, give them what they want -- exclusive content, deals and rewards.

If you don't have time to do all that, consider using a Facebook fan engagement app that does (almost) all of the work you.

Here's a look at three app makers that can help convert your Facebook fans into customers:

1. Vocus: With Vocus' straightforward suite of 18 slick Facebook apps, you can sell goods and services directly from your wall, post fan-only giveaways and contests, and collect leads with surveys. No social media ninja skills necessary. Simply pick the apps you need, enter the text and images, and convert fans to customers.

Vocus Facebook apps also post your firm's Twitter and RSS feeds, YouTube videos, commercials, and white papers right from your wall. Bonus: Vocus' simple web interface alerts you when people -- potential and happy customers, we hope -- mention you on Facebook and Twitter, and allows you to instantly reply.

2. WildFire by Google: Wildfire's Social Marketing Suite lets you grow, engage, and monetize your audience on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest all at once. Create, schedule, run and manage Facebook status updates, tweets and pins from a single, simple application.

Wildfire's well-designed Facebook page manager is perfect for building and customizing your business's Facebook page. Choose from more than 100 prefab and surprisingly attractive, customizable page templates to get up and running fast. Then collect and convert fans with Wildfire's viral plug-ins, which make it easy to instantly generate leads, personally respond to fan comments and even "fan gate" (require people to Like your page before they can enter a contest, access a coupon or spy a special deal).

Wildfire plans range from 99 cents to $4.99 per day. You can even pay as you go.

What makes Agora Pulse stand out is its convenient Facebook CRM product. It gathers fan data, stores it and even dumps it into your own CRM database. And 24/7 email alerts mean you'll never miss a fan comment or question.

Agora Pulse offers several affordable pricing plans, spanning from $9 per month to $99 per month. Each has a maximum fan limit, though.

What tools do you use to boost your Facebook marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments below.

Kim Lachance Shandrow

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributo...